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Taking its cue from the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo social movements, this seminar offers a survey of twentieth and twenty-first century stories of and by black women across a range of multi-ethnic, sociocultural contexts in Africa and the diaspora. Engaging with the legacies of slavery, colonialism, nationalism and neoliberalism, the selected stories—comprising novels, short stories and life or travel writing—will demonstrate how black women writers have used print literature to negotiate and traverse norms and conventions that threatened to delimit their social possibilities and self-representation. Their themes variously encompass: the tensions between tradition and modernity that shape women’s identities and self-understanding; the role of education as both an instrument of self-advancement and a form of alienation; the question of how to bear witness to the histories of women and peoples who have been inadequately represented; and the creation of “hybrid” identities and forms of multiple belonging in the contexts of cultural displacement, translation and change. During the seminar, you will explore how social, sexual and ethnic differences shape access to representation in both literature and media, more widely, and develop your understanding of the practice of reading itself as a crucial site in the ongoing struggle for equality.
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BLACK ATLANTIC FEMINIST DIALOGUES
